date: 13.01.2010
location: chicks hotel, port chalmers
Newcastle-based
organisational and musical force Chris Hearn, aka Alps, briefly
alighting at None Studios in Dunedin while on his New Zealand tour with
Ray Raposa, aka Castanets, from Portland, Oregon, pleasantly coincided
his stay with my arrival in the city. As it eventuated, no local support
act had been organised for these fine gentlemen's southernmost NZ gig.
Consequently, discussions in the None kitchen resulted in Radio Cegeste
being invited to support Alps and Castanets in a certain esteemed
experimental music venue at a nearby charming port, the very next
evening (ie. "your name is on the poster"). Rather than baulking at this
short notice thrust into the limelight (such as it was, on a Wednesday
in Port Chalmers), I very sensibly recognised an opportunity to
experiment with the public presentation of the slowly evolving Radio
d’Oiseaux project, and, as you can see from these photos by Markus
Gradwohl, verily jumped at the chance.
Sound
sources this time were field recordings of birds played through mini FM
transmitter, Radio New Zealand vinyl pressings of birdsongs played on a
portable record player, 78s, music box and related sonic ephemera (such
as one of those musical cards, emitting the song of a New Zealand
native bird - the Saddleback - via an activation of an embedded digital
chip/music box, every time it was opened).
You
can't see them too well here, but there was also a live visual element,
involving a slowly diminishing stack of c. 1960s Forest and Bird
magazine covers, propped in front of a static video camera routed
through the in-house projector, and progressively removed one by one
during the performance.
My
one regret concerning the evening, apart from its various minor
equipment failures, was that Ray's set, vulnerable, desolate, delicate
and blacky humorous at turns as it was, had included, as was evidently
his habit, a cover of everyone's favourite pop song about death, Blue
Oyster Cult's (Don't Fear) The Reaper, in every NZ show except this one. Damn!
